Leif Gifford will be presenting a live performance, Contained Explosions.

Contained Explosions is the next stage of development in Gifford’s ‘Explosive Tendencies’ series of audio-visual experiments. Her performance for Friday Night, incorporates previous sculptural works with her new videomapping processes. Within the immersiv installation, she animates, destroys and rebuilds her memories with cues from live music and projections. Enter Leif’s collapsing and renewing world of sculpture, projection and exploding memories. She invites us into a scribbly, colourful, volatile world inside all of our heads, whilst technically testing the boundaries of videomapping and textile sculpture.

Leif Gifford for her exist@Metro performance uses a technique called video mapping.

This is a relatively new technique in live video art where projections are mapped to architectural or sculptural structures. Adding audio to the video mapping experience can make the performance like contemporary theatre or being in a live music video. Gifford’s abstractions are well-developed and use drawing as a base, rather than graphic design which is commonly used commercially. As the video mapping software develops so does the artform.

Within Trace there was a piece that uses a similar electrical process, as Batol’s ‘Touch Machine.’
It is Joyce Hinterding’s “Large ULAM VLF Loop.”
Essentially in Hinterding’s work your body is completing an extra extra low volatge circuit between the alligator clip and the graphite on the wall, and in Batol’s work your body is completing an extra extra low voltage circuit with somebody else’s body as each of you you hold onto a knob. Technically, you could use two bodies in Hinterding’s work also, but it is set up for solo interaction with just one set of headphones.

“Pop on the headphones and then touch the graphite pattern that is painted on the wall. As a naturally very curious person I found this intriguing, and I find that point where science and art meet fascinating. I spent at least 8 minutes touching different parts of the pattern, to see how the sound coming through the headphones was affected.

I had a very interesting sensation immediately after taking off the cans. The buzzing continued in my ears for a few minutes, which was very disorienting in the quiet environment of the gallery. While I had been immersed in the artwork with the headphones on, as soon as they came off and I looked away, it was as if I’d just woken from a deep sleep, with earplugs in and I still couldn’t hear anything.

I enjoyed this artwork as it is not often that I am invited to interact with a piece, and while the sounds were not pleasant to listen to, it was interesting to hear the changes according to where I placed my hands, and sometimes face.”

PERIL magazine’s Eleanor Jackson had this to say about Batol’s work Read more here

“Batol, a multi-disciplinary artist with intersecting interests across the mediums of intervention, new media and sculpture, will be presenting the interactive installation, Touch Machine. Drawing upon some of Batol’s signature approaches to exploiting technology for unpredicted ends, the work features hacked technologies that provide sonic response to incidents of human touch.

The tactile and the technological provide delicious contrast and congruence for modern-day audiences. On one hand, video games, mobile devices and personal computers all employ haptic feedback in increasingly ubiquitous and normalized ways. On the other hand, human touching and feeling, and the accompanying social interactivity implied in physical touch – particularly between strangers – seems to present something more dangerous and unexpected. Our phones may be on vibrate for each other, but when it comes down to it, Batol asks “how ready are we to touch and what do we expect will happen?”

What do you think about Alrey Batol’s work?
Comment on your blog and leave a link #EXISTari PRETTY PRETTY PLEASE

Ma Ya Ga Ng Re Ne (Thomas Day) will be presenting a live performance, Secrete Success.
A recreated office environment is employed as a microcosm for wider society. The repetition of daily activities becoming a distorted lens through which we may examine embedded cultural demands for the individual to succeed
Informed by a diverse range of sources including queer readings of popular culture and Situationist critiques of capitalist society, Secrete Success asks; Who among us can afford the privilege of failure?

Eleanor Jackson will be presenting an interactive installation, Now You See Me.
Taking a titular cue from Karolina Bregula’s project Let them see us, which is emblematic of ongoing themes of representation and visibility in contemporary queer visual art, the piece takes a deliberate step towards “unseeing”, the obscured or misinterpreted view.
In doing so, it asks – with sorrow rather than judgement – if the rainbow visibility of Pride movements and temporary media luminosity have contributed as much to creating a society of acceptance as we may like to imagine

The PerformanceMap APP iphone app available free to download from the istore an @EXIST initiative – made by @Kerstin Haustein The PerformanceMap App is made for the live streaming of performance art, live art and action art Please feel free to use and share – and provide feedback. At present – only the latest performance will be available on the website – next steps are to build an archive so that the performance will be embedded into performance map. Copyright of all performances are held by the artist. Version for android pending @performancemap.org exists as a platform to share performance art virtually around the world